The 5 Most Important Areas to Consider in Brand Reputation Management

Abhishek Srivastav is a professional writer working with RBS Reputation Management, a sister company of Ethane Web Technologies. He loves writing about SEO, social media & reputation management. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

Brand reputation is not a new thing and it is not about to die out either. It is an important part of marketing. There is no way you can expect your marketing efforts to be successful if you do not have good relations with the public. These two go hand in hand with each other. Marketing helps in branding and branding helps further marketing. How much do you think companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Apple and other world renowned corporations pay for brand reputation management? It is definitely a whole lot of money.

As a brand grows, controlling its reputation becomes more difficult. You will have to grow your reputation management strategies with the growth of the brand. Take for instance what musicians do. They create a loyalty base which sometimes renders them untouchable. Celebrities like Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Kim Kardashian are brands and they have a fan base that shuts down any negativity regarding these ‘brands’. Corporations might not be able to have fanatics to keep their reputation well managed but they can hire social media officers and such professionals.

Points of reputation management

There are several areas of reputation management that you should always put into consideration. These are the points where your reputation is bound to be tarnished and they are the points where you will be working to improve your brand’s reputation. These points include among others:

Search engine dominance

Social media PR

Brand monitoring

Brand reviews and recommendations

Negative PR management

These are the five most important aspects of brand reputation management that you should always keep in mind. It does not matter whether you are doing online reputation management or general public relationship management. These are very important. Let’s analyze them one by one.

Search engine dominance is important particularly for new business. The search engines are the biggest source of traffic for any website. Being able to dominate the first page results with the listings that you control is going to be extremely helpful. Ensure that all the details that are printed on the first page are correct. You do not want your business contacts to be wrong. Ensure that you have a Google + page as Google is going to include them in the search results (on desktops though). When your brand appears prominently in the search results for the search terms that are key within your industry it exudes authority.

Social media PR basically refers to how your brand is interacting with people on social media platforms? There are several social media sites available for your branding efforts including Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Instagram, Pinterest and others. The first thing that you will have to do is select the site that is relevant to your business. For visually-oriented products Pinterest and Instagram will be so much better than Twitter. However if you are creating written content then microblogs like Twitter and Facebook are the best.

The thing about social media sites is that they provide a fantastic platform to help you nurture that public personality that you desire. You should strive to maintain activity on the social media sites and establish yourself as an authority. This adds credibility to what you say. For the large businesses social activity should not be limited to the business’ online profiles only but also to those of the key staff members.

Brand monitoring tools are in no short supply nowadays. You will not have a problem keeping track of your brand’s activities. There are the likes of Google and Bing Alert, Technorati, Hootsuite, Social Mention and WhosTalkin. These help you to stay on top of your branding efforts. You will know what people are saying about your brand. All social mentions and searches on search engines relating to your brand are going to be brought to your attention.

Monitoring your brand is very important in the branding process. This is because you might end up engaging yourself in the task of manicuring a hen’s nails- pointless job that is. If you have people saying nasty things about your brand and here you are busy promoting your new product you are bound to waste a lot of time and money with this product promotion. The brand monitoring will help you figure out the perception that people have concerning your brand.

Brand reviews and recommendations are also a vital aspect of branding. It is important that you encourage your customers to review your business. Let them tell you exactly what they like about your business and ask them to recommend it to other people. There are also those online feedback sites like Yelp where customers go to share their opinions concerning various businesses. Generally, encourage the users to review your products and brand positively.

Negative PR management is also tied to the brand reviews and recommendations but mainly refers to how you handle the negative reviews and defamation. A majority of times negative PR comes from customers who did not really enjoy the customer experience. They will post content on their social media or worse still the feedback sites. The best thing that you can ever do for your business is to handle all customer complaints as soon as they appear.

If there are negative comments posted online you should ensure that they are followed up and responded to. The medium you use to respond is also going to matter. For instance replying to a negative comment on the feedback site might be more detrimental than helpful. It can help to fuel the problem. Contacting the individual privately is the best options to take- sort out the issue privately.

Conclusion

Brand reputation management is not exactly a straightforward process. There are several aspects to it that need consideration. Five of these areas have been outlined above and some of the others like brand advocacy and custom service are too wide to discuss in one sitting. Putting the aforementioned into consideration will help greatly in your branding efforts and cultivation of a positive brand image.